Making Job Search Easier by Finding the Great Companies First

If you are interested in virtual reality, then Magic Leap may be the company for you. Non-shocking, non-spoiler alert of the day: virtual reality is the next big thing. Yawn, of course it is. We’re just sitting here waiting for the product that’s going to rock our world. It’s coming, we know it is, everyone knows it is… and it’s getting closer every day. So they say. While you may have been inundated with virtual reality news and promises in recent years, you may not be as familiar with the term mixed reality. And if not, then you probably aren’t familiar with the most famous, and infamous, name in mixed reality – Magic Leap. Magic Leap is in NOT Silicon Valley If it’s a big deal in tech, then it’s got to be in Silicon Valley, or Washington State, or based out of MIT, right? Surely no one would guess that what some are calling the tech that will next change the world would come out of suburban Florida, but that is indeed where Magic Leap can be found. Except that it’s really hard to find, in a knowledge kind of way. Let me start over a bit. Virtual reality…

Everyone pretty much knows at this point that Virtual Reality is finally starting to take off in a big way and develop into the uber-cool piece of futuristic awesomeness that we’ve drooled over in sci-fi movies and TV shows for decades. One of the companies that has a lot to gain from these advances and is also actively adding to them is Unity, creators of one of the top game engines around today. Unity has finally released it’s highly anticipated suite of VR editing tools in a free download for developers called EditorVR, and it’s incredible. Building Virtual Reality inside VR If you’re not a developer, the simplest way to describe EditorVR is as a VR game for VR developers. When a gamer plays a VR game, they get to interact with their surroundings in an almost real way, picking things up and moving them around as they move their real hands and arms to do the same. That fun interactive experience is possible because the game developers spent endless hours with a mouse and keyboard programming it to work that way, then switching to a VR headset to check and make sure it worked right. Then switching back to the mouse…

Ever since the Oculus Rift hit Kickstarter several years ago, VR enthusiasts have been on the edge of their seats waiting for the brave new world powered by virtual reality… which to date has been slow to come at best and a dud at worst. Oculus got swallowed up by Facebook and has been sitting in a pile of hopeful applications yet to come ever since. Samsung’s Gear VR is being practically given away on street corners in an attempt to gain users. Everybody else in the game is experiencing similar results. That might be because as cool as it is to sit in one place and be able to experience concerts or sports events from around the world in 3D while on your couch, and as cool as it is to be immersed inside of a game instead of playing as – really – more of an observer of the action than a part, the holy grail of VR is still what most people dream of and are waiting for. Anyone who has read any of my posts regarding virtual reality, augmented reality, or the like know that I’m referring to, of course, a Holodeck-like experience. True immersion comes when…

Boston-based SyncThink has received their tenth patent in the US, if it holds up to legal challenges from other VR companies exploring similar advances. The patent is related to tracking eye movements in virtual reality headsets, an application which they’ve already put to good medical use and which has the potential to open up many new possibilities in VR technology. Earlier this year SyncThink, founded by Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, MD, PhD, FACS, and President of the Brain Trauma Foundation, gained FDA approval for their EYE-SYNC device. EYE-SYNC is a neuro-technology device which tracks eye movements is order to determine if a sports player has developed a concussion during or after a game. The device tracks the eyes for abnormal movement, which is a hallmark of concussions, and according to the company can return a diagnosis in sixty seconds, and is accurate and reliable. Stanford University’s Sports Medicine program is already using EYE-SYNC to screen athletes during games and determine whether they can return to play, and they believe it could become the diagnostic gold standard for sports-related concussions with every team and organization from high school through the professional level. While sports and military injuries are the primary focus right now, the implications…

As a race, we humans have finally hit the wall. Reality just doesn’t cut it anymore. We need virtual realty ( VR ), augmented reality. mixed reality. It’s evolution. It’s progress. It’s what all the cool kids are talking about. And it’s about to be a huge business opportunity. Last fall Forbes reported that more than $4 billion had been invested in virtual reality since 2010. That actually doesn’t seem too overwhelming a figure for such a high-tech sci-fi type of enterprise, and it seems much lower when you consider that $2 billion of that was Facebook buying Oculus, the maker of the Oculus Rift VR headset that has been the talk of VR enthusiasts for the last few years but still hasn’t made a breakthrough. Then there was the much hyped but then much maligned Google Glass, the first really big thing in augmented reality, which also failed to make any serious headway. So should you investigate a job in any of these alternate reality fields, or are we still tears away from anyone finding anything viable? As is almost always the case, following the money is a good clue to the answer. Depending on which Venture Beat article you believe, the VR…